Sony Reboots Horizon Hunters Gathering Away From Live Service
Guerrilla Games is overhauling its in-development co-op title Horizon Hunters Gathering, stripping out its live service components after players responded negatively during multiple playtests held earlier this year, according to a Bloomberg report covered by PC Gamer.
What Went Wrong With the Playtests
Horizon Hunters Gathering was originally designed as a live service co-op action game in which players team up to battle the mechanical creatures synonymous with the Horizon franchise. The game went through three playtests this year, and player reception was poor across all of them. One of those sessions had to contend with the timing of Marathon’s server slam weekend, which likely pulled attention away. Rather than shut the project down outright, Sony gave Guerrilla several months to retool the game into a more traditional co-op experience built around a story and a narrower scope, as Eurogamer reports.
A December Deadline and a Smaller Team
The reboot is not guaranteed to survive. According to GameSpot, Sony informed the Guerrilla team that the project must impress executives at a milestone review in December. If that presentation falls short, Horizon Hunters Gathering could join a growing list of canceled Sony live service projects. Most of the developers originally assigned to the game have already been moved to other work, leaving a smaller group to carry the reboot forward. A separate, equally small team inside Guerrilla is reportedly working on the next mainline single-player Horizon game, which is described as years away from release.
Sony’s Broader Retreat From Live Service
The situation with Horizon Hunters Gathering fits a clear pattern at Sony. Live service spinoffs set in the God of War, The Last of Us, and Spider-Man universes were all canceled before reaching players. Concord launched and was pulled from sale shortly after. Destiny 2 is being wound down in its current form. Of Sony’s live service lineup, PC Gamer notes that Helldivers 2 and MLB The Show stand out as the only titles performing well, with Helldivers 2 developed by third-party studio Arrowhead and MLB The Show benefiting from an annual sports release cadence. That leaves Fairgames, a live service heist game that has not received an official update since 2023, with earlier reporting from Insider Gaming suggesting developers were struggling to establish a fun core loop in pre-alpha.
Sony’s repeated willingness to pull the plug on live service projects signals a shift in priorities, even if the company has not made a formal public statement on its strategy. For Guerrilla Games, December will determine whether Horizon Hunters Gathering gets a future at all.
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